First look: Toshiba’s loudmouth laptop

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009

We’ve recently taken delivery of a Toshiba Qosmio X300-13W, which has waded into the Labs and stomped all over practically every other notebook we’ve got in at the moment. While X300-13W isn’t a name that gives much away, a quick glance at the picture on the left will tell you, instantly, that this isn’t a shy, retiring business laptop or a cheap netbook.

Not so. Instead, it’s the loudest, shoutiest and most enthusiastic desktop replacement that we’ve ever seen.

(more…)

First look: Toshiba Qosmio F50-10Z

Monday, September 22nd, 2008

While we have seen a trickle of Centrino 2 laptops arriving in the PC Pro Labs of late – the Sony VAIO FGN-FW11ZU and Advent 5511 are two of the more recent examples – the new Toshiba Qosmio F50-10Z has to be one of the most exciting, at least based on first impressions.

The keyboard, for instance, is surrounded by a chrome border which extends to the pair of unusually-shaped mouse buttons, and the panel of touch-sensitive controls above the keyboard glow white, rather than the more reserved blue we’ve seen from Dell’s XPS laptops.

Audio is provided by a pair of harmon/kardon speakers – similar to those in the Toshiba Satellite P300 – and volume is altered by a circular control just below the keyboard. Predictably, it’s chrome-covered and bordered with bright white light. There’s also a huge Qosmio logo that arches its way across the lid, as if you didn’t know that this extroverted notebook had been designed, from the ground up, to entertain.

(more…)